State Plates
The South Carolina Income Plate
In South Carolina, income is where the atlas's population counts meet household economics. This plate places Black South Carolina in the national income geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black households, and South Carolina's own distribution figures — 1.45 million Black residents, 27 percent of the state — give the scale of the community those national patterns describe within the state's borders.
The National Pattern
The income figures take their local meaning in South Carolina, where the table's state rows set the population this benchmark describes. Median household income is the most widely used single measure of a population's economic position, and for Black households in the United States the Census Bureau's annual income report places the figure at $56,490. In an atlas a benchmark answers one question — where does South Carolina stand — and leaves ranking aside.
For South Carolina, the national benchmark is a yardstick, not a description; the description is the state's own distribution, tabled below. Household income counts the combined money income of everyone aged 15 and over living in the home — wages, salaries, self-employment income, Social Security, pensions, interest, and cash benefits — before taxes. The plate sets the national midpoint beside South Carolina's households and invites the two-sided reading.
The income figures take their local meaning in South Carolina, where the table's state rows set the population this benchmark describes. The national median household income in the same report is $77,719. Against that benchmark, the Black median of $56,490 is about 73 cents on the dollar. That is the benchmark's use: South Carolina is located by it, not ranked by it.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for South Carolina; the benchmark rows are the published national figures, labeled as benchmarks. In South Carolina, the plate makes no state income estimate of its own — it sets the state's population, counted exactly, beside the national income record, measured exactly, which is the honest first step of any income geography.
The Population Behind the Plate
In South Carolina, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table below. On this plate — the plate for South Carolina — black South Carolinians record indicators near the Southern pattern: income and attainment below national Black averages in the rural counties, near them in Columbia and Charleston's suburbs, with the state's Black professional class concentrated in the capital's public and university sectors and in the health systems of the three metros. South Carolina's rows, read against the national midpoint, state the standing of its households.
For South Carolina, the national benchmark is a yardstick, not a description; the description is the state's own distribution, tabled below. South Carolina's profile is the series' study in demographic depth: a state whose Black majority lasted into living memory's grandparents, whose African cultural retention is the strongest on the mainland, and whose contemporary figures — 1.45 million people, more than one in four — describe continuity under transformation. Read for South Carolina, the plate's own table is where this general material meets the specific geography, and the two should be read together.
Residents moving between states — domestic migration — are the stream that built and rebuilt Black geographies across a century and a half, South Carolina's among them. Read against the population counted on the distribution plate, the national median describes the economic center of gravity of the community that South Carolina's 1.45 million Black residents belong to. Holding the structure still while the numbers move is the gazetteer's work — the only way an atlas stays honest across editions, for South Carolina as for every entry.
An atlas is patient with its subjects. In South Carolina, the income geography of Black America changes at the speed of households — of graduations, hires, diagnoses, incorporations, and moves — and the federal surveys that measure it publish on their own calendars. For South Carolina, what does not change between releases is the structure this plate records: a counted population in South Carolina, a measured national pattern, and the standing invitation to read the two together, state by state, until the whole country has been read that way. That is the work of this section of the atlas, and the South Carolina Income plate is one page of it.
The subject here is The South Carolina Income Plate, and the reading is the atlas's standard one: the published figures first, the interpretation after. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 27%; Black share, alone or in combination: 28.4%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 1.45 Million. For South Carolina, that is the whole of the plate's claim, and it is enough for a reference.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 27% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 28.4% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 1.45 Million |
| United States benchmark — Black median household income, Census Bureau annual report | $56,490 |
| United States benchmark — Black median household income per $1 of the national median | 73 Cents |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Income in the United States (Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplement); American Community Survey. Method: Figures are drawn from the published federal sources named on this page, for the geography named; tile shading bands the published Black population share into the five legend classes. Counts are rounded as published by the source agency, and national benchmark rows are labeled with the basis they are published on.